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Six
daily duties are recommended for the lay Jain. These are not
compulsory rules but advisable practices to help spiritual
development. Here they
are:
(1) meditation and prayer,
(2) honor to the Tirthankara,
(3) respect for spiritual teachers,
(4) repentance for the things one has done wrong,
(5) control of the body by holding a fixed position during
meditation,
(6) renunciation of certain pleasures, activities, foods,
fora fixed time.
Somadeva,
a great teacher of the 10th century A. D., in a widely-read list of
duties. included charity and reading the scriptures.
The
religious life of the individual is helped by a regular routine of
religious practice. Whilst religion
will permeate the whole life of the pious Jain, he or she will also
want to set aside some time each day to concentrate the mind on
religion. This may be a time of meditation, or it may be accompanied
by ritual actions, it may take place in the home or, if a temple is
convenient, in the temple, or in a meditation hall. A short
time set aside each day (the traditional period is
forty-eight minutes) in a quiet place is possible for all of us. The
mind is calmed, passions are reduced, self-control develops.
Reference
has been made to the Pancha Namaskara
, the best-known prayer of the Jains, It is a formula .of
surrender, not request,
to the five categories of praise worthy individuals. The rolling
sounds of the ancient language echo at every Jain religious
gathering, chanted by all the people, who learned it in childhood.
Namo arihantanam
I bow to the enlightened souls
Namo siddhanam
I bow to the liberated souls
Namo ayariyanam
I bow to religious leaders
Namo uvajjhayanam
I bow to religious teachers
Namo loe sawa sahunam I
bow to all the monks in the world
Eso pamca namokkara savva pavappanasano mamgalanam casavvesim
padhamam havai
mamgalam
This
fivefold salutation which destroys all sin is pre-eminent as the
most auspicious of all auspicious things.
Samayika really means equanimity:
the practice of samayika involves
meditation, usually for a fixed period of forty-eight minutes. At
its simplest it is performed in any quiet
place. The person sits quietly cross-legged like a monk ( for samayika is sometimes seen as a temporary ascetic state), and
turns the mind to compassion and friendship with all living
beings, and to separation from all desire and
hatred. Sometimes the
devotee will recite verses which have been
learned in the ancient Ardha
Magadhi
language of the scriptures,
asking forgiveness, promising virtuous conduct and praising the
great figures of the Jain religion.
Sometimes samayika may be carried out in the presence of a
religious teacher. The devotee will bow to the monk and
recite a formula of dedication and confession before
commencing meditation. The spiritual presence of the teacher
will have a beneficial effect.
Jains
will often use a simple religious formula as a focus
for meditation, or will meditate before an image of theTirthankaratirthankara,
or perhaps diagrams on cloth or metal depicting
in graphic form objects and persons of the faith. A Jain home will quite probably have at least one image, perhaps in an
elaborate and beautiful shrine.
Some
Jains (the Sthanakvasi
sect) do not believe that images should be used but for the majority
of Jains more elaborate rituals
are advocated. It is important to remember that the
rituals are intended to concentrate the mind. The material
objects, the actions, the words, are all means to an end, not
an end in themselves. Different groups of Jains in different parts of India will, of course, carry out the rituals with
some variations.
A
pious Jain who lives conveniently near a temple may carry out the
worship of the Tirthankara
image in the temple daily before
going to work. Otherwise it may be performed before
the shrine at home. Bathed
and dressed simply, possibly only
in two pieces of cloth like a monk, he will bow before the
image and recite the Pancha Namaskara
.
He will pass three times
around the image (which in a Jain temple is set forward
from the rear wall) . He may perform the ritual washing of
the image with water and milk and a mixture of sandlewood and
saffron, or it may be done by a regular official of the
temple. Although women take an active part in Jain rituals
their role is somewhat simplified.
Various
offerings are now made before the image.
Grains of rice
are arranged in the symbolic figure of Jainism, a
swastika
(denoting the four possible kinds of rebirth, ash eavenly beings,
humans, lower living beings, or creatures of hell) having above it
three dots (the Three Jewels of Right
Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct), and at the top a
single dot within a crescent for the final resting place of
he liberated souls. The other offerings may be flowers, incense,
fruit and sweets though the practice varies. After other prayers the
Pancha Namaskara is repeated. This will be
followed by the Chaitya Vandana,
the temple prayers of reverent
salutation: these commence with a formula of repentance for any harm
caused to living creatures on the way to the temple; salutations
follow to the twenty-four Tirthankara and to all monks and nuns;
then the virtues and good
deeds of all the Tirthankara follow and the devotee
expresses the desire and intention to emulate them. In his or
her devotions the worshipper does not seek worldly favor but
sees the Jinajina
as a divine example to be respected and
followed. The worship concludes with the rather beautiful
ceremony of arati
(aarti),
the waving of fivefold lights before the image. The image is, of
course, only a symbolic representation of the Tirthankara and is in
no sense a living god.
Nevertheless it is considered necessary that a fully-consecrated
image should receive daily attention and worship.
A
special beauty is given to the rituals by the language in which they
are performed. Ardha
Magadhi
was the language of the ancient Magadha region
in north-east India where Mahavira
lived. It was the familiar speech of the people, a 'Prakritprakrit' or popular language as distinguished from the
classical Sanskrit of
the orthodox scholars. Although
no longer a spoken
language, Ardha Magadhi is used today in Jain prayers and rituals,
not only for the sonorous splendor of its
rolling sounds but also because a Jain, what ever his or her
native tongue, can follow the familiar prayers and chants.
Every Jain will have learned from childhood at least a few
recitations and can take part in temple prayers with other
Jains with whom he or she may not share a common modern
language.
Other
practices are recommended as beneficial to the
spiritual development of the individual. Monks and nuns
receive great honor from the laity and it is a meritorious
thing to pay one's respects formally to them on occasion and to make a confession in set terms of one's faults and
misdeeds. It is, of course, a duty of the laity, and one
giving great merit, to provide food and other necessaries for
the mendicants. Another recommended practice which we must
mention is the reading of the scriptures, for these enshrine
the wisdom and example which can help a Jain greatly on the
spiritual path. Jains are very generous to Jain charitable objects: again merit ensues to the individual who contributes
to temple buildings, religious education, refuges for animals
and the like.
Needless
to say, not every Jain manages to fit a full schedule of religious
activities into every working day. What
follows is the simple daily routine recommended for a pious
Jain. He or she will get up an hour and a half before sunrise
and will commence the day with the Pancha Namaskara and other
prayers. Reflecting on the spiritual advancement of the soul,
the pious Jain will recite sincerely the Pratikramana, the formula
of contrition for harm and misdeeds. A visit to the temple
follows as described above. Then the monks are visited, respectfully
greeted and their needs cared for, or if there are no monks there,
is given to fellow Jains or others who need it. If there is time it
may be possible to hear
a sermon from a learned monk. The religious person will
not eat at night, nor in the first forty-eight minutes of the
day, so breakfast is deferred until now. The daily work will,
of course, occupy most of the day, broken by a period of
prayer before the mid day meal. The last meal of the day
should finish before sunset. There will be an evening visit
to the temple for worship and aarti, the ceremonial waving of lights before the image.
The day will end with a further
repetition of the prayer of repentance and perhaps reading
the scriptures. With the mind calm, forgiving all others and
seeking forgiveness, the Jain goes to bed, and if sleep is
disturbed calms the mind again with scriptures or the Pancha
Namaskara .
An
important part of Jain spiritual training is the control
of the body, so that hardship and suffering are accepted
even-mindedly, the passions are reduced, the inflow of karma
is lessened and existing karma is shed.
The lay person will share,
in lesser degree, in the austerities of the monastic life. Austerity
(tapas) can take various forms. Essentially, however, it needs to be
approached with the right attitude, not seeking worldly reward nor
allowing mental disturbance to result. Of the six 'external'
austerities, four are concerned
with food, fasting (which is often undertaken on the set
fasting days each month), eating less than enough to satisfy hunger,
going without food unless some arbitrary outside
condition is fulfilled, avoiding more tasty foods. Jains do
take these seriously and food restrictions are a common form
of self-discipline. Solitariness
or seclusion for the avoidance
of temptation is the fifth austerity, and the sixth is the
acceptance of deliberate physical hardship in one form or
another. Linked with these are six internal austerities, repentance, respect to
monks and nuns, service to them, study of the sacred scriptures,
detachment from the body and passions
and lastly deep meditation. These are all part of the spiritual
training of the monk. but the lay person can also, though without
the same single mindedness, share in these
austerities.
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